


Seeing Things

by Azdak



Category: Man from Uncle - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-21
Updated: 2011-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 20:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azdak/pseuds/Azdak





	Seeing Things

The door behind him opens in a certain way, and the hair stands up on the back of Napoleon's neck.

UNCLE HQ is the last place on earth you'd expect to see a ghost. Steel walls, chrome furnishings and neon lights aren't conducive to spectral sightings, and any spirit that did have the strength of will to manifest in so inhospitable an environment could hardly survive the withering blast of disbelief that greeted it. UNCLE is empirical, hi-tech, and socially progressive. So are its employees. They believe in science, not superstition. They look to the future, not to the past.

And yet Napoleon keeps catching glimpses. A door slides open in a certain way and the hair stands up on the back of his neck. A light flickers, and for a moment he could swear he'd seen a flash of gold. More than once, alone in his office, he's heard a familiar tread in the corridor outside, a step that ceases as soon as he becomes aware of it.

It's all a trick of the mind, of course. The rational part of him – the UNCLE part – understands that. Certain sounds, certain scents, certain patterns of light and shade once meant that Illya was present, and so now, when he isn't, when he never will be again, Napoleon's stupid brain keeps joining the dots wrong, keeps filling in empty space with Illya.

His brain didn't start generating the illusions right away. For the first few days, when he was still expecting the communicator to warble at any moment, when every buzz of the intercom jerked him to his feet in the hope of good news, he didn't see any phantoms. At Illya's funeral (a typical UNCLE affair, with no body, and no grieving relatives, just somber-faced men and women who went straight back to work afterwards) there were no ghostly presences, just handshakes in the rain, and that guilty sense everyone has at funerals of being still alive.

The ghost must have come with the ring.

Which just goes to show that ghosts are as capricious and illogical as the human brain. Because Illya had never been particularly attached to that ring. He had put it on almost at random, sometimes wearing it for days at a time, then leaving it in his desk drawer for weeks or months. Napoleon never knew what particular event made him take it out and put it on again. But when the ring came back, twisted out of shape and partially melted, Napoleon started to see things.

He wonders sometimes if the visions will become more intrusive, and he doesn't know if he hopes that more than he fears it. What if they go beyond glimpses, sounds, the feel of warm breath on the back of his neck, the scent of skin? What if the ghost starts to linger, to interpose itself between him and the real world, the shadow becoming solid, the outline filling in? Once, he thinks he feels a touch on his shoulder and says, "Illya?" before he can stop himself. But when he turns round, there's nobody there.

At night, it's different. At night, Illya doesn't vanish. He can feel the warm weight of him pressed against his body. He wraps his arms around him, and he still doesn't melt away. Those are the dreams where Waverly never got the report, where someone else got the assignment, where it was someone else's funeral he went to. In the dreams, he feels a wave of happiness as he realises that it was all his imagination, that Illya isn't dead, was never dead, never will be dead. Then he wakes up and certainty settles on him like frost, and it's all he can do to drag himself out of bed.

He can't go on like this.

The door behind him opens in a certain way, and the hair stands up on the back of Napoleon's neck.

This time, the illusion doesn't vanish. It's a rather battered-looking illusion, pale and swaying slightly in the doorway, but astonishingly clear, astonishingly solid.

"What's the matter?" says Illya with a smile, as his partner's arms fold around him. "Anyone would think you'd seen a ghost."


End file.
